Battle of Badr

The Battle of Badr occurred on 13 March 624 in the Hejaz region of the western Arabian Peninsula. A larger army of the pagan Quraysh tribe led by Abu Jahl, among other chiefs, was decisively defeated by a smaller Muslim force led by Muhammad in the turning point of the rise of Islam. The Muslims succeeded in pushing the Quraysh back, beginning a campaign to spread Islam to Mecca that would last six years.

Background
Muhammad began preaching Islam in 610 after he had revelations from the archangel Gabriel, informing him that he was God's last prophet, and that he needed to spread his word to people of all faiths. He preached about benevolence, peace, charity, and familial love, earning the endearment of hundreds of people, but he insisted that there was only one God, angering the pagan Quraysh and their supporters. He was besieged in his home city of Mecca in 614, with an embargo being enacted to starve the Muslims and force them to submit to paganism; some of his followers fled to Axum in Ethiopia. Muhammad himself stayed in Arabia and led his people through hardships. When his uncle Abu Talib ibn al-Muttalib lay on his deathbed in 619, Muhammad received an offer from the Quraysh to end their persecution of Muslims in exchange for an end to the spread of Islam, but Muhammad insisted that they believe in only one god. This led to hostilities, and Muhammad and his followers left for Mecca in 622. There, they met hundreds of supporters, and in 624 he led an army of 313 infantry and cavalry north to stop a convoy of confiscated Muslim goods from Mecca from reaching Damascus, where they would be sold. The Quraysh dispatched an army to guard the caravan, led by Abu Jahl and other Quraysh chiefs. The two armies joined battle at Badr despite the Quraysh's insistence that Abu Jahl retreat, and the decisive battle of the war was fought.

Duel of the champions
The Quraysh outnumbered the Muslims three-to-one, but Muhammad called a shura and announced that God would either grant them the caravan or victory in battle. With this, the Muslims decided to engage their Quraysh adversaries at Badr. The two armies followed tradition and sent out three champions: the Muslims sent Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, Ali, and Ubaydah ibn al-Harith, while the Quraysh sent Shaybah ibn Rabi'ah, Utbah ibn Rabi'ah, and Utbah's son Walid ibn Utbah. In the ensuing fight, Ubaydah and the three Quraysh champions were killed, and the Quraysh chiefs were shocked by the loss of their champions.

The charge
Abu Jahl proceeded to shout, "For Mecca and the gods!", and all of the Quraysh generals ordered their men to charge the Muslims under a constant hail of arrows coming from the Muslim bowmen. The battle then consisted of bloody melee, and the Quraysh generals fought the Muslim warriors face-to-face with their men. The Quraysh ruler Umayyah ibn Khalaf was run through by his own former slave Bilal ibn Rabah, and Abu Jahl himself was mortally wounded by two Muslim warriors before Abdullah ibn Masud finished him off. The Quraysh army, unenthusiastic about fighting, breaking and running; the Quran says that an army of thousands of angels descended from Heaven to scare the Quraysh army away. By the time that the battle was done, 14 Muslims and 70 Quraysh warriors were dead, and 70 Quraysh were captured.

Aftermath
Almost all of the Quraysh leaders were slain in the battle, a disaster for the pagans and a great victory for Islam. Many joined the faith now that it had proved that it was capable of winning against paganism on the battlefield, and the Quraysh leader Abu Sufyan called for an army of 3,000 Quraysh soldiers to be raised, spending every gold coin in his treasury to defeat the Muslims. This would lead to the Battle of Uhud a year later.